The Savvy Shopper

Today’s shopper is very savvy, powered with smartphone and other wonderful technologies to help her. Retail technologist have this idea to bring contextual interaction through mobility. Innovative companies are applying strategies where customers are profiled and segmented to send specific offers & coupons to enhance the experience. Technologies in the form of BLE based Beacons, NFC tags are enabling shopper’s engagement. The topic is much broader than just proximity marketing.

To discuss this broader matter in a live, in-person platform, industry experts took part in an exclusive Track of The Money Event which was held on 10th of September at CTIA’s super mobility week in Las Vegas. This exclusive track was titled “The Savvy Shopper”.

The track involved the following sessions designed to address specific aspects of the engagement between customers and brands & retailers. Some exclusive quotes were also captured as follows:

SS1: What's next in Retail? Challenges & Opportunities for Innovation

Patrick Meyer, Chief Marketing Officer, Thinaire said:

“Fingerprint Sensor was the Precursor to Apple NFC Payments”

“87% of people use smartphones while shopping. As per a Gartner study, consumers do want coupons. 43% consumers said they will rethink what they’re buying if they get a coupon. The ability to tap or pick up the beacon - you give me an incentive and its right there. That’s really the big opportunity in 2015. I want to share with you something which is really important at the customer level. You want a partner that can handle enterprise solutions. That’s the transition that is going on in the world of NFC - if you talk to top level CEO's and CMOs.”

“SwiftIQ is one of our partners. They’ve got a CRM database. A lot of people have that but SwiftIQ’s API brings back the kind of incentive required. As an example, there are 20000 or more recipes for Kraft. The ability to recognize the person who wants a particular recipe and bring back the right recipe at the right time, that’s a powerful one on one tool. That’s something we're doing with brands and retailers.”

Bill Clark, CEO, Spindle said:

“The need of the hour is the combination of payments and marketing companies focused on commerce. We have 17000 brands on our platform. We have spoken to a lot of retailers and up until this point there is still a lot of confusion. I think 2015 is really the opportunity bringing more open platform to enterprises."

"Mobile payments are more secure than carrying plastic cards today because authentication in mobile phone based payments system is actually more robust. NFC might be little less secure but with stuff like HCE we are really moving forward. I think millennials are really looking for benefits, offers etc. The technology and security is not that much of a problem, convincing millennials to adopt mobile payments is.”

David Wentker, CEO, Tapcentive said:

“We have developed enterprise platform deeply embedded in loyalty. Targets are merchants - how to influence behaviour depends on linking of digital and physical and basically the markets now have to rethink a little bit.”

“Tapcentive works with much bigger companies. It’s less about advertising, promotion etc. and more about the relationship you’re trying to develop with the retailer. A lot of retailers consider how to retain their customers on Mobile. Millennials don’t want to see a pop up ad inside an app; they want something fun, something engaging and interactive. For retailers the magic is when it’s all happening inside their app.”

Mikal Belicove, Columnist, Entrepreneur Magazine said:

“Given apples announcement yesterday what are the implications for CEO's? As an apple developer and fanboy, I’ve been very excited. Fingerprint sensor was the precursor to it all. We’ll have to see how NFC and proximity solutions unfold. Currently, 82% of OS are android, iOS accounts for 15-16%.”

SS2: In-store & In-aisle Shopping Innovation (Beacons & NFC)

Patrick Meyer, CMO, Thinaire said:

"NFC lets you use your own creativity to create experiences."

Corey Wilson, Global Director of Consumer Experience, Smartrac said:

“NFC awareness is important for Apple Pay and it may change Mobile Payments.”

Thanks to Thinaire for sponsoring this exclusive track and their RF solutions for transforming media, objects, products, and create individually unique touchpoints for distribution of mobile content in order to enhance customer engagement.

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